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France could recognise Palestinian state ‘in June’: Macron
France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, president Emmanuel Macron said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalise this movement of mutual recognition by several parties,” he added.
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He said:
I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognise Israel in turn, which many of them do not do.”
Such recognition would allow France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist – which is the case with Iran – and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region,” he added.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the 7 October 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonising Israel which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
More on that story in a moment, but first here are some other Middle East related developments:
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At least 23 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in northern Gaza, as reports emerged that the Israeli military is preparing to seize the entire city of Rafah as part of a newly announced security corridor. Medics at al-Ahli hospital said that the bombing on Wednesday of a four-storey building in the Gaza City suburb of Shijaiyah had killed at least eight women and children, as rescue workers continued to search for survivors into the evening. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a senior Hamas militant.
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The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has submitted a legal filing saying it should be removed from the UK government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups. Hamas is arguing that it is not a terrorist group but “a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project”.
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Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat held talks in Washington on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a visit by US President Donald Trump, which would be the first foreign trip of his second term. Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met US secretary of state Marco Rubio at the state department, and the two called on the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces to resume peace talks.
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Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen overnight into Thursday killed at least three people, while the death toll in an earlier attack rose to 13 dead, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said. The rebels meanwhile aired footage they said showed the debris left after shooting down yet another American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
Key events
Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat held talks in Washington on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a visit by US president Donald Trump, which would be the first foreign trip of his second term.
Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met US secretary of state Marco Rubio at the state department, and the two called on the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces to resume peace talks, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The diplomats “agreed that the Sudanese armed forces and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) must return to peace talks, protect civilians, open humanitarian corridors, and return to civilian governance,” the state department statement said after the meeting.
The call came after the Sudanese army said last week it had retaken full control of the capital Khartoum after weeks of attacks by the paramilitaries.
The RSF has been battling the army since April 2023, and the war has created what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst hunger and displacement crises. More than 12 million people have been uprooted, tens of thousands killed, and a UN-backed assessment declared famine in parts of the country.
The US under Joe Biden and the Saudis have previously sponsored several unsuccessful rounds of negotiations to end the bloody conflict.
Suspected US strikes overnight in Yemen kill at least three people, Houthi rebels say
Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen overnight into Thursday killed at least three people, while the death toll in an earlier attack rose to 13 dead, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said. The rebels meanwhile aired footage they said showed the debris left after shooting down yet another American MQ-9 Reaper drone, reports the Associated Press (AP).
The 13 killed in strikes on Tuesday night around Hodeida’s al-Hawak district made it one of the deadliest single incidents in the ongoing US campaign, the rebels said.
Another 15 people were injured. The Houthis described the majority of those killed as women and children, without providing a breakdown.
The area is home to the city’s airport, which the rebels have used in the past to target shipping in the Red Sea.
Since its start, the intense campaign of US airstrikes targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Middle Eastern waters – related to the Israel-Hamas war – has killed more than 100 people, according to casualty figures released on Wednesday by the Houthis.
Footage aired by the rebels’ al-Masirah satellite news channel showed chaotic scenes of people carrying injured people to waiting ambulances and rescuers searching by the light of their mobile phones. According to the AP, the target appeared in the footage to be a home in a residential neighbourhood, likely part of a wider campaign launched by the Trump administration to kill rebel leaders.
Early on Thursday morning, the Houthis said airstrikes targeting the al-Sabeen district in the south of the rebel-held capital, Sana’a, killed at least three people. The area is home to al-Sabeen Square and a major mosque that has been a gathering point for months for Houthi demonstrations against the war in the Gaza Strip. Other strikes hit the capital as well.
More airstrikes hit Kamaran Island in the Red Sea, the Houthis said.
The US military’s Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US military operations, did not acknowledge the strikes. That follows a pattern for the command, which now has authorisation from the White House to conduct strikes at will in the campaign that began 15 March.
The US military also has not been providing any information on targets hit. The White House has said more than 200 strikes have been conducted so far, reports the AP.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking in the Oval Office on Monday during a visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warned that the US was “not going to relent” in its campaign targeting the Houthis.
France’s recognition of Palestinian statehood “would be a step in the right direction in line with safeguarding the rights of the Palestinian people and the two state solution,” Palestinian minister of state for foreign affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Nearly 150 countries recognise a Palestinian state. In May 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced recognition, followed by Slovenia in June, in moves partly fuelled by condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza that followed the 7 October attacks.
But France would be the most significant European power to recognise a Palestinian state, a move the US has also long resisted, reports AFP.
On a visit to Egypt this week, French president Emmanuel Macron held summit talks with president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II and also made clear he was strongly opposed to any displacement or annexation in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
US president Donald Trump has suggested turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” with the Palestinians moving elsewhere – a suggestion that has sparked bitter condemnation.
Macron responded that the Gaza Strip was “not a real estate project”. He said:
Simplistic thinking sometimes doesn’t help.
Perhaps it would be wonderful if one day it developed in an extraordinary way, but our responsibility is to save lives, restore peace, and negotiate a political framework.
If all this doesn’t exist, no one will invest. Today, no one will invest a cent in Gaza.”
France could recognise Palestinian state ‘in June’: Macron
France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict, president Emmanuel Macron said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
“We must move towards recognition, and we will do so in the coming months,” Macron, who this week visited Egypt, told France 5 television, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Our aim is to chair this conference with Saudi Arabia in June, where we could finalise this movement of mutual recognition by several parties,” he added.
He said:
I will do it because I believe that at some point it will be right and because I also want to participate in a collective dynamic, which must also allow all those who defend Palestine to recognise Israel in turn, which many of them do not do.”
Such recognition would allow France “to be clear in our fight against those who deny Israel’s right to exist – which is the case with Iran – and to commit ourselves to collective security in the region,” he added.
France has long championed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including after the 7 October 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy switch and risk antagonising Israel which insists such moves by foreign states are premature.
More on that story in a moment, but first here are some other Middle East related developments:
-
At least 23 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in northern Gaza, as reports emerged that the Israeli military is preparing to seize the entire city of Rafah as part of a newly announced security corridor. Medics at al-Ahli hospital said that the bombing on Wednesday of a four-storey building in the Gaza City suburb of Shijaiyah had killed at least eight women and children, as rescue workers continued to search for survivors into the evening. The Israeli military said the strike targeted a senior Hamas militant.
-
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has submitted a legal filing saying it should be removed from the UK government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups. Hamas is arguing that it is not a terrorist group but “a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project”.
-
Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat held talks in Washington on Wednesday, laying the groundwork for a visit by US President Donald Trump, which would be the first foreign trip of his second term. Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met US secretary of state Marco Rubio at the state department, and the two called on the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces to resume peace talks.
-
Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen overnight into Thursday killed at least three people, while the death toll in an earlier attack rose to 13 dead, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said. The rebels meanwhile aired footage they said showed the debris left after shooting down yet another American MQ-9 Reaper drone.